LAST week’s Johnson column celebrated “National Grammar Day” with some thorny grammatical issues: the uses of which versus that, the plural of words borrowed from foreign languages and how to handle one of those things that drive(s) me crazy. All defy attempts to impose hard-and-fast rules, because perfectly good grammar (as practised by the best English writers) points in more […]
That’s lousy luck for scientists in most of the world. A laboratory assistant works with a microscope at the Ngoma Health Center on Feb. 5, 2014, in Ngoma, Rwanda. I learned English as a second language. Becoming an Anglophone turned out to be a crucial advantage in a brief scientific career years later. (I once […]
Learning a second language could improve reading and intelligence skills Learning a second language can have a positive effect on the brain, even if it is taken up in adulthood, a University of Edinburgh study suggests. Researchers found that reading, verbal fluency and intelligence were improved in a study of 262 people tested either aged […]
